by
adam baum
1st REAL day of sessions thoughts
Keynote
I have to start out by saying the Diane Greene needs to hang out with either Bill Gates or Steve Jobs to learn presentation skills. She's seems very uncomfortable and does not exhibit large amounts of charisma. Personality aside, her keynote focused on what we've been hearing for the last year or so: DR, BC, VDI, etc. One theme that was prevalent was "Flexible and Dymanic IT". She also spoke on how virtualization has moved from tactical to strategic. This type of thinking has always bothered me. We tend to look at IT as being separate from the business, but it really should be thought of as part of the business. This can mean different things depending on what your business is, but I boil it down to "Don't let technology run your business" It's people, processes, and products (or services) that define your business. This holds true even for technology companies.
Getting back on track...Diane's big announcement was ESX 3i. It's the embedded system we've bveen hearing about the last few months. It can fit on a 32MB flash card. Dell gave a demo of powering one up and provisioning a guest. It's interesting that the product that enables the easy distribution of appliances is now becoming an appliance. I have mixed feelings about appliances. When done right, they are great. Problem is most are not done right. What I mean is that just because you take your software and put it in a device without any visible interfaces does not make it an appliance. Mgmt folks tend to hear the word "appliance" and think toaster simplicity. This is not the case. Most modern IT appliances need regular care and feeding. It's no longer called patching, it's now a firmware update...Ever configure a router? Depending on to whom you talk, it can be considered an appliance. To me, A true appliance is something you plug-in, power-up, minimally configure, and leave it alone except for yearly updates. We'll see how ESX 3i fares in this regard. BTW, all the major server layers have plans to ship it.
Next were Intel and AMD...Nothing really new from these two. Basically, here's out new CPUs and here is what's in them.
On to the breakout sessions...
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